


The Shoe Situation

by Laurea



Category: Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28052571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurea/pseuds/Laurea
Summary: In which Morwen takes a day out of her travels to buy shoes, solve mysteries, and sort out an economic crisis.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. In Which Morwen Loses Her Shoes and Finds a Problem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blurble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blurble/gifts).



> This story is set between book 2, Searching for Dragons, and Book 3, Calling on Dragons.

Morwen scowled down at the orange spell-sludge coating her last pair of traveling boots, attempting to peel the remains off of her feet before any of it could make contact with her skin. It shouldn’t hurt to touch directly, considering that the sludge had started out as tea — but then again, it shouldn’t have transformed into this mess, either.

She prodded the sludge with the edge of a traveling knife, trying to scrape it off the shoe leather, but it already clung with an unpromising determination. “Drat. There must have been too many extra minerals in the water for the heating spell to work properly.”

“I should say so.” Miss Eliza Tudor, a fluffy white cat, jumped up onto a nearby rock, swishing her tail neatly around her paws to ensure it didn’t get contaminated by any of the sludge. “Didn’t you say there were floods in this region recently? Why on earth didn’t you check the water before casting a spell on it?”

“I wouldn’t call a few months ago recently,” Morwen said, rummaging through her sleeves for a small chisel to start scraping at the sludge. "I would have expected any competent ruler to have cleaned up this mess already. Mendanbar and Cimorene would never have left it so long.”

“Does that mean we’re going home?” A small brown head peeped around Morwen’s leg as Fiddlesticks leaned down to sniff at the spell-sludge. "Oh, blech, that doesn’t smell good at all!” He tilted his head closer to get a better angle, wrinkling his nose at the scent.

“Then stop sniffing it,” Morwen told him. "And no, of course we aren’t turning around. If we go all the way back home now, we won’t have time to make it to the Extraordinary Enchantment Expo by the end of the week.”

“Then are you going to go barefoot? I thought you said humans didn’t like to do that.” Fiddlesticks stretched up to peer at the boot from below, batting an exploratory paw at one of the dangling laces.

“No, we don’t.” Morwen sighed as a chunk of sludge-encrusted leather crumbled away, leaving her with only enough shoe for a very skimpy sandal. "But it looks like I’ll have to bear with it for the time being. We should be passing through this kingdom’s capitol city soon, though, so it shouldn’t be a problem for long if I stay on the broomstick. Hopefully Lumefair will have some reasonable shoe stores.”

* * *

Half an hour’s broomstick flight later, they did indeed find themselves entering the capitol city of Lumefair. It seemed a bit more rundown than Morwen would have expected for a bustling trading town, but even so she could see plenty of shops selling all manner of goods. And even if the buildings seemed old and in need of updating, a closer examination proved them neat and well-kept. While the streets could use some replacement cobblestones here and there, someone kept them swept clean and tidy. Perhaps not the most prosperous kingdom at a glance, but she ought to be perfectly safe in purchasing new footwear here.

She’d expected to conclude her shopping and resume her travels in half an hour or so — but tracking down a decent shoe store proved much harder than it looked. The first two shoe stores she tried to approach had their entrances locked and barred, even though she could hear people moving and whispering inside. She tried knocking at the second shop, in case this might be the norm here, but her only answer was the rapid patter of footsteps away from the door.

Morwen frowned, sitting on her broomstick in front of the shop door. This seemed rather more serious than just a few shops closing early. Other stores seemed open and in business — it was only the shoe stores that were closed. She flew back to the main street and began to study the shops again, much more slowly this time.

“Haven’t you found any shoes yet?” Fiddlesticks asked, from his perch at the back of the broomstick. He’d chosen to sit as close to the bristles as he could, watching the ground move below them in unending fascination. “Or fish? Fish would be better than shoes. We don’t have any of that, either.”

“We’ll look for fish when we stop for dinner,” Morwen told him, scanning the area around her. The people here seemed different than she’d expected. Strange looks would be perfectly understandable considering that she was riding her broomstick through town with two cats and no shoes — but she would have expected open stares and gossipy chatter, not furtive whispers from bystanders who made a point of not looking directly at her.

No, something very odd was happening in Lumefair — by the time she tried a third store, she was sure of it. She initially took it for a better bet, based on an open door and shoes displayed in the window — but on entering, she realized the shoes were all crafted from wax. On questioning the clerk, she discovered that the previous ownerhad sold their shoe shop to the neighboring candlemaker and left for another kingdom a week ago. The clerk offered to sell her a variety of admittedly lovely shoe-shaped candles, but had clammed up when Morwen had inquired about actual footwear.

“Well, they can’t all be closed,” Miss Eliza said, as the broomstick turned back to the door. She batted Fiddlesticks away from sniffing a fish-shaped candle without looking, then gave her paw a quick grooming. “They do wear shoes here, so they must have shoe shops somewhere. What in the world do you think is going on?”

Morwen glanced out the door ahead of them — and spotted a young woman waiting in the middle of the pathway ahead. She’d planted herself where Morwen would have no choice but to pass her, eyes fixed on the ground ahead and hands twisting together in a nervous tangle. “I don’t know — but I suspect we’re about to find out.”

“Really?” Fiddlesticks leaned around Morwen to see ahead of them, abandoning the candles for something more interesting. “Do you think it will involve fish?”

“I doubt it.” Morwen sighed and directed the broomstick to stop in front of the young woman, taking in her practical craftswoman’s dress and messy brown braid. “Can I help you?”

The young woman tried to smile, but the anxious twist of her lips ended up looking rather more like a grimace. “Possibly.” Her eyes darted from Morwen to the cats, and she bit her lip. “I — well, I’ve been told that you’re looking into shoes? Shoe sales?”

“That’s right,” Morwen agreed, since she’d made no secret of it so far. “Mine were destroyed in an unfortunate tea-making accident, and I came here hoping to purchase replacements.”

“Replacements — what, for you? For your own shoes?” The young woman’s brow knit as if Morwen had unexpectedly dropped a few words of Latin into their conversation. She stared at Morwen more closely, her eyes darting across the broomstick, the cats, the robes — and she gasped at the sight of bare toes peeking out from the black fabric. “Oh my goodness gracious, you really _are_ looking for shoes!”

“Well, _obviously_ ,” Miss Eliza said with a disapproving sniff. “Why else would someone go looking for shoe stores?”

The young woman stepped forward, an even greater urgency in her eyes as she reached for Morwen’s hand. “Well, if you really did just happen to show up in need of shoes, then — then you’d better come with me to my shop. I’m Romilly, and I’ll do my very best to sort you out. If we’re careful, maybe we can get you on your way before anyone else takes notice!”

* * *

Romilly didn’t seem inclined to chat much more as she wove them through the bustling early afternoon streets. However, Morwen couldn’t help but notice that she seemed rather inclined to keep a careful eye on the roads around them, and on one occasion doubled back away from a particularly busy intersection they’d been approaching.

What could be going on to cause this much concern? Morwen hadn’t learned much about Lumefair beyond the basics, since she’d only intended to travel through it briefly on her way to the EE Expo. An average kingdom, though the royal family had more daughters than they knew what to do with. Decent farmland, some textile exports. They would have been in the path of all those rainstorms a few months back. Nothing too unusual for a kingdom of this size — and certainly nothing to lead someone to behave the way Romilly was acting.

And that meant that clearly there was more going on than met the eye. Morwen glanced down at Miss Eliza, and a discreet blink from the cat confirmed that she’d worked out a similar conclusion. Something odd was brewing in Lumefair, and shoes were right in the middle of it all.

After a circuitous tour of what felt like half the city, Romilly led them up the steps to a large, tidy-looking shop with all manner of clothing on display in the windows. Unlike the other stores Morwen had approached, this one was definitely open, and Romilly didn’t waste a moment before ushering them through the public areas into the back rooms, where several busy employees worked at stitching or measuring garments.

“It’s okay,” Romilly said, when half a dozen nervous employees looked at her worriedly. “Just — just a traveler, nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of it.”

She didn’t explain further, but around the room, shoulders untensed and expressions relaxed. The craftspeople went back to their work without argument, giving her respectful nods as she passed. Romilly might not be the oldest or the most confident person in the room, but Morwen could tell that she was the one in charge here.

“Well, look at that,” Miss Eliza said, peering around as they passed through the room. “They aren’t just making clothing. I see belts, travel bags, and other leatherwork, too. They have everything here that they would need in order to add shoemaking to their business — but I don’t see a single shoe.”

“Very interesting indeed,” Morwen murmured.

Finally, Romilly led them to the furthest door in the back of the room. “Here — let’s go into the stock room, and I’ll see what we can find for you.”

She shooed Morwen inside, hardly waiting for the last broomstick bristles to clear the door before snapping it shut behind them. And if that hadn’t been suspicious enough, she made a point of locking the four of them inside before motioning for Morwen to join her at a narrow bench as far from the door as possible.

“I hope you’re planning to explain all this,” Morwen said, raising her eyebrows. Rather than move to the bench, she stayed on her broomstick, hovering nearby so they could talk face to face. Miss Eliza opted to stay on the broomstick as well, where she could keep an eye on the conversation, but Fiddlesticks decided to explore the stock room instead. He jumped down to sniff at the piles of boxes on the tall shelves lining the room, poking his nose into every corner. He knew better than to make a mess, though, so Morwen decided to leave him to his amusement and focus on Romilly.

“Well — obviously I’m going to explain, or we wouldn’t need all this secrecy. It’s just —” Romilly bit her lip, twisting the long fringe of her braid round and round her fingers. “It’s a terribly long story.”

“Well, hesitating won’t make it any shorter,” Morwen said, before they could get into any excuses. “Let’s hear it.”

“All right.” She clutched both hands around her braid for courage, then blurted, “It’s illegal to sell shoes to anyone outside the royal family!”

Well, _that_ wasn’t what Morwen had expected. She blinked, readjusting her thoughts to this new information. “That doesn’t sound like a viable economic strategy.”

“Oh, it hasn’t been like this forever — just about a month or so,” Romilly corrected herself, waving her hand in hasty protest. “And — and of course I don’t think King Octaviar really thought about what it would mean for the economy when he made the decree. He’s always cared much more for his quests and hero-ing than business concerns, so he always used to leave it to Queen Ella. But then when she died a couple years ago, he just let his advisors start running the place.”

Which sadly happened more often than not, considering the lack of training royalty often got in sensible subjects related to ruling a kingdom. But even taking all that into account, the explanation didn’t add up.

“There’s a difference between not understanding economics and arbitrarily outlawing shoes,” Morwen said, narrowing her eyes. “With the number of shoe shops we saw, even a large royal family couldn’t keep all of them in business alone. I assume the king must have had _some_ sort of reason for enacting a law that would put so many of his subjects out of business.”

“I should think it’s more than just the odd law,” Miss Eliza chimed in, fixing Romilly with her most unnerving unblinking stare. “She felt under considerable threat walking through her own streets, as though there could be danger in asking about shoes.”

“I agree.” Morwen gave Miss Eliza an approving nod before looking back to Romilly, who appeared a little confused by the exchange. “You’re leaving out a key part of this situation, if you’re this nervous about a stranger inquiring about shoes. Are you involved in some kind of black market?”

“No! I would never be involved with _them_!” Romilly’s eyes blazed at Morwen for a moment, before she realized and shrank back. “I mean — that is — I wasn’t worried about that. It’s just that the shopkeepers all sent me messages about you, in case you might be another of those obnoxious heroes crashing around town.”

Morwen’s eyebrows shot up. “Where do heroes come into it? Economic crises are certainly dangerous, but they don’t usually attract heroic attention.”

“They do when the king offers up the princess of their choice as a reward.” Romilly’s mouth tightened in a thin, pale line at that, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment. Her fingers tangled deep into her braid, unraveling it until it hardly held together at all.

“Hmm.” Morwen eyed the young woman for a moment, a few more pieces clicking into place at this display of obvious distress. “And what exactly are these heroes expected to do for this reward?”

“They have to solve the mystery.” Romilly swallowed hard, then opened her slightly red-rimmed eyes. “They have to find out why all of the princesses’ dancing shoes are worn through every night.”

“Every night?” Miss Eliza’s tail swished back and forth in disapproval. “Those must be some very poorly made shoes!”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Morwen agreed, though with rather more manners than her cat. “Even under heavy use, I would expect good quality dancing shoes to last nearly a month. One night for well-crafted shoes is absurd. Maybe instead of hiring heroes, the king should have been looking into buying better slippers.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my shoes!” Romilly sat up ramrod straight, eyes flashing with indignation. “Or with anyone else’s, either! Lumefair shoes are the best — we even make glass ones that don’t break when dropped!” She flushed, realizing that she’d exclaimed too enthusiastically. “That is — that’s why there’s a reward out. Because of how strange it is.”

“And they can’t just stop holding balls every night?” Morwen suggested, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, no — there haven’t been any balls in months, not since the celebration for Ceri — that is, for Princes Cerelia’s eighteenth birthday,” Romilly said, hastily correcting herself. “The princesses haven’t even been attending dancing parties at other noble homes.”

“But their shoes are still getting worn out?” Miss Eliza wrinkled her nose. “That sounds like trickery to me.”

“What’s worn out?” A tiny voice came from the top of one of the shelves. All three others looked up to see Fiddlesticks perched up on the highest shelf, nosing at a large box tucked at the edge. “Is that why Morwen still can’t get any shoes? I thought that was why we came here. Are they all broken?”

“Stop that!” Romilly gasped, her eyes widening in alarm. “Please, don’t touch that box!”

Morwen raised an eyebrow at the reaction, but agreed. “Fiddle, get down from there. You know better than to climb other people’s furniture!”

“But I thought I smelled something interesting,” Fiddlesticks objected, putting his paws on the edge of the box and peering in. “Maybe it’s something delicious. Maybe it’s fish!”

“Fiddlesticks —” Morwen began, but she didn’t get to finish her order. As she said his name again, Fiddlesticks poked his nose into the box — and another compartment opened in the wall beside him. He leapt back with a yowl of surprise, diving into the large box until only the twitching tips of his ears were visible.

“Oh, my.” Miss Eliza stood with a languid stretch and padded over to the new compartment. She looked up into it, ears pricked forward as if she’d spotted a particularly tasty mouse. “Morwen, I think you’ll want to see what she’s got here.”

Morwen glanced over at Romilly, who had covered her burning red face with her hands. “I think I can guess.”

And sure enough, when she went over to join Miss Eliza in inspecting the new compartment, she found a neat stack of twelve pairs of slippers with ruined soles.


	2. In Which There Are a Great Many Princesses

“It’s not like I _meant_ to cause all this trouble,” Romilly said, slumping back on the bench with one of the ruined shoes in her hand.

“Then what exactly were you trying to do?” Morwen asked, examining the hidden compartment more closely. “Because to me, this looks like evidence of deliberate and longstanding fraud.”

Romilly fiddled with the trim peeling off the shoe, making a half-hearted attempt at weaving it back into place. “Well — we just needed enough funds to fix the storm damage. All those farmers got flooded out, and Ceri couldn’t talk her father’s advisors into extra funding, or even just reducing taxes this year, and — and —” Her fingers clenched tight around the shoe, face crumpling like she might burst into tears at any second. “It’s all such a mess now!”

“Oh no, are you sad?” Fiddlesticks popped his head out of the box, looking down in concern. He heaved himself free, then jumped down to the floor and trotted over to peer up at Romilly. He put his paws on the bench next to her, nosing at her hand. “You shouldn’t be sad. I know there wasn’t any fish in the box, but I bet we’ll find some later. Maybe there’s fish outside!”

It was probably a good thing that Romilly couldn’t understand him, Morwen reflected — but at least the obvious friendliness brought a watery smile to the young woman’s face. She reached out to scratch Fiddlesticks’s ears rather than crying, which was a definite improvement.

“Well, I can certainly see why you were worried about someone asking for shoes,” Morwen said at last, turning to frown at Romilly. “Not all heroes are entirely stupid, and someone could put together the facts sooner or later. And royalty don’t like being fooled by commoners — I would expect anyone suspected in such a case would need to answer some very sharp questions.”

Romilly stared at the ground, burying her fingers in Fiddlesticks’s fur as he purred contentedly. “I know. But now the whole kingdom is on edge, and I haven’t been able to talk to Ceri in _weeks_ , and — and I just don’t know what to do!”

Morwen sighed. The young woman really ought to have known better… but her heart had been in the right place. And she’d made an effort to fix a problem, which was a great deal more than most people could say. “Have you considered that it might be best if the situation just resolved itself? After all, if the shoes simply stopped getting ruined —”

“We still wouldn’t have enough money to deal with the floods,” Romilly said, shaking her head. “I — I did think about just stopping, but — even if the heroes stopped nosing around, those penny-pinching advisors won’t spend anything if they don’t have to. They won’t even give the farmers an audience anymore, not even when Ceri and all her sisters asked!”

“And that’s why you all decided to pretend to replace their shoes?”

“Well — the princesses do get to purchase their own clothes without a lot of oversight. And since I’ve been making their shoes for a while — well, it all seemed to make perfect sense.” She sighed. “Until the heroes started showing up.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, then jumped to her feet and darted over to the shelves Fiddlesticks had been climbing. After a quick rummage through the boxes on a lower shelf, she pulled one out and held it towards Morwen. “Here — I can’t sell you anything with the royal decree still in place, but — but you can take these as an apology for dragging you into the middle of my mess. I just meant to get you off the street before any heroes got suspicious, not to make you listen to all my problems.”

Morwen looked into the box, and found a well-made pair of traveling boots. If the princesses’ slippers had been of this quality, then Romilly had been perfectly justified in her defense of her work — Morwen could see why she made shoes for royalty.

She looked down at the boots for a moment, considering that Romilly had been perfectly prepared to hand them over to a stranger with no expectation of a real exchange — and then looked down at the young woman, who had knelt to give Fiddlesticks another scratch on the chin to hide her watery eyes. She watched a moment longer as Fiddlesticks purred with contentment, then gave a decisive nod.

“I have a better suggestion. You might not be able to sell these shoes to me, but I would feel unfair if I didn’t offer you something more comparable to their worth in exchange. Why don’t I help you with your shoe situation? I think that between the four of us, we should be able to come up with a resolution that works for everyone.”

* * *

For a kingdom that had apparently suffered from a great deal of flood damage, Lumefair Castle was remarkably grand. Morwen eyed the extravagant tapestries as a butler led her through the halls, cats trotting at her heels with as much politeness as they ever mustered. She couldn’t help but speculate what just one of those elaborate images of a heroic knight might have cost — enough to help some of the farmers, that was for certain. At least the tapestries weren’t new, though. That would truly have been unforgivable for a kingdom in financial crisis.

The tapestries did have one good thing going for them — as soon as she entered the throne room, Morwen could immediately identify King Octaviar as a much older version of the knight depicted performing various heroic deeds. It all seemed a bit much to her for his images to be plastered all over the walls, though. Yes, monsters needed slaying if they were menacing his people, but surely there was no need to make such a fuss about extermination duties.

“Welcome, heroes,” a herald proclaimed as they approached the throne. The king looked up, studying the group with narrowed eyes, while a dozen elaborately dressed advisors loomed smugly around him. The king didn’t even bother waiting for the herald to finish, leaning forward on the throne. He might have had the solid look that heroes often got after several quests, but not the stoicism that often went with it. Worry simmered at the back of his eyes, and the deep lines creasing his brow looked recent.

“Can you break the curse on my daughters?”

Morwen’s eyebrows shot up at this unexpected question. “Excuse me?”

“They’ve been cursed for over a month now,” King Octaviar went on, his deep voice booming through the room, “and not one of the heroes I’ve asked so far has managed to break it. Do you think you can do better?”

“I doubt it,” said one of the advisors, a middle-aged man with a heavily embroidered red cape and shiny black shoes. He looked over Morwen, sneering with distaste as he noted the faint traces of road dust clinging to her travel robes. “She can’t be much of a hero — no armor, no weapons, and _cats_ for sidekicks. No respectable hero would show up looking like such a disgrace.”

Morwen narrowed her eyes. “Then it’s a good thing that I’m a witch, not a hero, isn’t it?”

“A witch? Then maybe you’ll make actual progress with this mess.” The king sighed. “Well, you can’t do worse than the heroes who’ve tried so far, anyway. So, standard reward if you succeed, the hand of the princess of your choice —”

“No, thank you,” Morwen said, rather more sharply than she’d intended. “I’m not particularly interested in marrying a young lady that I’ve never met, and I’m sure your daughters feel the same about me.”

The king frowned. “But that’s a standard reward for curse-breaking!”

Morwen had to force herself not to roll her eyes. “Maybe for heroes, but not for me.” She frowned. “Why are you so convinced the princesses are cursed? All I’ve heard about are their ruined shoes.”

“Their behavior has been changing so much, these last few months.” King Octaviar shook his head, and his shoulders slumped a little as if a heavy weight had settled on them. “Whenever I’m back from a quest, they act so strangely. Whispering together when they’re in public, avoiding the court all the time, and they have holes in their memories about whatever is destroying their shoes. I ask them, and they just shrug!”

“And your first assumption was that they’ve been cursed?” Morwen eyed him dubiously, trying to gauge his sincerity.

“Their minds have been deeply addled,” the red-caped advisor spoke up, stepping forward and rubbing his hands together in a manner that Morwen found particularly grating. “It is quite obvious upon speaking with them — you’ll see what we mean.”

“Yes — that’s right.” The king straightened, taking on a more regal manner. “You’ll have till morning to attempt to solve the mystery. If you can provide me with a solution by the morning, you’ll — well, we’ll sort out some kind of reward for you.”

And with that Morwen found herself ushered away from the throne room, advisors clustering around the king behind her.

As she and Fiddlesticks followed the burly-looking guard out of the room, she caught Miss Eliza’s eye. The cat slipped back along the throne room wall, ducking behind a particularly long tapestry, the fringe at the bottom hiding the white fluff of her fur. Morwen nodded in approval, then hurried out so as not to draw further attention.

The castle was far too twisty for a reasonable building — not as bad as Mendanbar’s castle, of course, but far more of a labyrinth than necessary. And for some reason, the princesses had all been ensconced in one of the towers, with the eldest at the bottom and increasing in age. Looking at the architecture, she had to wonder if the family had simply built a new floor onto the tower whenever necessary, since the top floor appeared considerably newer than the lower ones.

Another reason for the tower became apparent as soon as the guard produced a key to open the door.

Morwen’s eyebrows shot up. “You keep them locked inside?”

He shrugged. “Got to keep ‘em safe till the king finds out what’s wrong, right?”

The door led into what appeared to be a large drawing room, with a staircase twisting up to the higher floors and another door leading to what was presumably the eldest princess’s bedroom. Sitting on the various chairs and sofas through the room, twelve lovely young ladies looked up with interest at the new arrivals. They all wore the fine gowns she normally associated with princesses — but instead of fancy footwear, they each wore simple heavy boots that were clearly much less expensive.

The guard gestured at them. “Here you go — the princesses of Lumefair.”

This seemed like a decided lack of manners — and judging from the looks on the princesses’ faces, they didn’t care for it either. One of the young women stood and approached — not the oldest or the tallest, but by far the most authoritative-looking. “That will be all, thank you. We can take over from here.”

“Eh?” The guard frowned. “But Princess Cerelia, after the last time, the royal advisors have ordered me to remain while —”

“Remain? But we can’t have a _man_ poking around in our bedrooms!” Princess Cerelia said, clasping her hands to her chest with a wide-eyed gasp. Morwen had to hide a smile — it reminded her a bit of the way Cimorene had used to deal with Antorell, before he’d realized she could run rings around him.

The guard frowned. “But my orders —”

“I’m sure there must have been a misunderstanding,” Morwen told him. “I can’t imagine the king would want men wandering around his daughters without supervision.”

His eyes darted from Morwen to the princesses, several of whom had suddenly become wide-eyed in horror at his threatened presence in their sanctuary. “Well —”

“I’m glad you understand! Now, out you go, before anything _frightening_ happens.” Cerelia shooed the butler out the door — presumably before he could remember to object to a witch being left alone with the princesses.

When the door clicked shut, the princesses looked at one another and burst into a flurry of giggles. Two of the youngest girls, who both looked under ten, began to make faces at once another, in spite of a quelling glance from the oldest-looking princess.

Cerelia ignored her sisters and ran forward with single-minded purpose till she could seize Morwen’s hands. “You’re helping Romilly, aren’t you? Please, you’ve got to tell me — is she all right? I haven’t seen her in weeks, not since the decree. I’ve been so worried!”

“She seemed well enough when I left her at the gates,” Morwen said, tugging her hands free. “So if you know that much, I assume you got her note without problems?”

“Easy — no one ever notices our maids carrying laundry in and out.” Cerelia rolled her eyes. “And they’re all hired from families in the area, so they’ve all known exactly why they need to help. But no matter how many notes we get, it isn’t the same as being able to see Romilly with my own eyes!”

“Well, the worst that can be said is that she’s very nervous about the shoe situation,” Morwen said, watching the relief wash through Cerelia at the confirmation that her partner was still unharmed. “But some nerves in this situation are quite understandable, considering the risks. Why on earth did you decide to go through such a ridiculous plan?”

“Well, someone had to do _something_!” Cerelia spun and began to pace the length of the room, passing behind her sisters’ seats. “Father’s advisors have just been ignoring all the flood damage, and I don’t think he’s even tried to get around them. They’ve had the run of the kingdom since Mother died!”

“Yes, I understand Queen Ella was quite the driving force of the kingdom.” Morwen looked around, taking in the group of young women carefully. They certainly seemed as pretty and sweet as many other princesses she’d encountered in the course of her friendships with Cimorene and Kazul — but these young women had an edge to their words that few of the others did. “She must have been quite a clever woman, from all I’ve heard of her.”

Cerelia nodded. “Comes from her merchant background. Grandpa apparently gave her all kinds of training about what she’d need to know to keep his business running, before that whole mess with her stepmother got started. And once she met Father at the ball and married him, she made sure that all of her daughters got a proper education, as well.”

“Smart of her,” Morwen said, nodding her approval. “I know several people who don’t think much of the traditional princess education.”

Cerelia shrugged. “Oh, we learned the etiquette and so on, too, of course. But Mother wanted to be sure we knew how to run our own kingdoms if we ever needed to.” She made a face. “Not that all those advisors believe it. They just listen to us talk, and then keep on doing everything the same way they always have! And if we try to talk to Father, he just tells us to work it out with the advisors, like he thinks they know what they’re doing!”

“And that’s how you and Romilly decided to join forces?”

A couple of the other girls giggled at one another at that, and a few curly blonde heads leaned in together for gleeful whispers. At the knowing looks from her oldest sisters, Cerelia went pink, her pacing speeding up even more.

“She’s been my friend ever since she started out as an apprentice,” she said, not meeting any of her sisters’ eyes. “And her teacher knew Grandpa, so Mother liked to work with their shop. So I knew her awfully well, and she knows some of the farmers in town — and we got to talking about how no one was doing anything to help them — and —” She shrugged.

“And you decided to do something about it yourself,” Morwen said, nodding.

“I didn’t think anyone would care!” Cerelia said, stopping short in the middle of the room as frustration overwhelmed her. “We hardly ever spend our full clothing budget, even when there are balls — and it’s not like we need that many new things to sit around the castle. I just thought we could send that money where it would be more useful. But then one of the advisors _noticed_ all the new shoes we were buying, and wanted to know why. And when Father started going on about curses — well, we couldn’t tell him the truth!”

“I don’t see why not.” Morwen looked around the room. Cerelia appeared to be in the older half of the twelve princesses, but the eldest had to be in her early twenties. “Quite a few of you are old enough to rule kingdoms of your own by now. You should be perfectly capable of participating in a sensible discussion about your home.”

The girls looked at one another nervously. “Father won’t listen,” Cerelia said at last. “The advisors won’t let him — they interrupt us whenever we try to talk. That’s why we had to go about things this way — because we didn’t have any options!”

“Well, you’d better find some quick,” Morwen said flatly. “Unless you’re willing to see your Romilly get into trouble for it. After all, when this mess falls apart, it’s very likely that the person involved who _isn’t_ a member of the royal family will end up shouldering most of the blame.”

“No!” Cerelia spun to glare at her, eyes flashing furiously. “No, I _won’t_ let that happen! I’ll take all the blame myself, and Father can — he can just throw me in the dungeon for all my days if he wants!”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Morwen said, wrinkling her nose at this display of hysterics. “Romilly and I have talked it over, and I think I’ve worked out a better plan. One in which no one should be thrown in any dungeons, if we’re very lucky.”


	3. In Which There Is Sensible Communication

Morwen hoped that this would be as good an idea as it had sounded like, back in Romilly’s shoe shop. She didn’t particularly want to get herself imprisoned so far from home — it would be extremely inconvenient to deal with, even if she was certain that she knew enough royalty that an unjust imprisonment would not be allowed to stand.

She supposed that if she really wanted to avoid trouble, she could just leave and let this family work out their own problems. But… she looked over at the row of young princesses, from the elegant twenty-five-year-old eldest down to a bubbly eight-year-old youngest, all twelve industrious blonde heads bent over piles of paper. She thought of a nervous young shopkeeper who’d offered help with no strings attached, and the princess who had panicked at the thought of anything dreadful happening to her friend. And she remembered the worried king waiting in the throne room, who’d asked about his daughters first, before his advisors had derailed the conversation.

No, she couldn’t walk away from this. Not when it could all be solved with a little sensible thought to put things right.

Finally, Cerelia looked up and nodded that the last of the princesses had finished their work. Morwen glanced over to where Fiddlesticks had perched on the high window sill, where he could see the castle gates and any new people to enter the area, and he gave her the very serious nod of a cat who knows he will be rewarded with a bowl of fish for dinner if he follows instructions.

“All right, everyone,” Morwen said, looking over the assorted sisters. “Time to get started.”

While the sisters clasped hands or whispered words of encouragement to one another, Fiddlesticks wriggled out the narrow window. As he trotted towards the gates, Cerelia stepped forward to lead Morwen and her sisters back through the winding halls.

As they reached the throne room, Morwen blinked in surprise to discover that Miss Eliza had abandoned her hiding place behind the tapestry. The fluffy white cat had instead found a more comfortable perch on the king’s knee, and she was amusing his royal majesty by batting occasionally at a bit of string he’d dangled in front of her. The kind smile he wore at the sight brought a great deal of lightness to his grim face, especially since his advisors had retreated to the corner of the room in a grumbling mass as they observed this frivolity.

When the princesses saw their father playing with a fluffy cat, they dissolved into quite predictable expressions of how adorable this was. Even Cerelia, nervous as she seemed, couldn’t help but smile, eyes softening at the sight. Morwen nodded to herself. This might go even better than she’d hoped.

The sound of giggling young ladies startled the king from his game with Miss Eliza, and he looked up with fresh worry darkening his face. “Girls? What are you doing out of your tower? You mustn’t wander until we have rid you of this curse!”

The princesses glanced at one another, feet shuffling and hands crinkling around their papers. It looked as though they might crumble under the weight of their father’s worry.

Morwen rolled her eyes and elbowed Cerelia’s side, nudging her not-so-subtly forward. Cerelia paled — but then squared her shoulders and faced the king. “We aren’t cursed, Father. We haven’t been cursed at all these last few months.”

Octaviar frowned at this. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t listen to the child, your majesty,” the red-caped advisor said quickly, swooping forward until he stood between the princess and the king. “That is precisely what a girl who has been cursed would say.”

“And it’s also what a girl who hasn’t been cursed would say,” Morwen pointed out dryly, stepping around the advisor so she could see the king properly. “But I can say for certain that none of these young women have been enchanted, cursed, ensorcelled, bespelled, hexed, or anything else of that nature — at least, not in regard to those shoes. And considering that I am a witch with considerable expertise in magic, that should count for something.”

“And how are we to know that this wasn’t all your doing, witch?” the advisor demanded, spinning to brandish a very dramatic finger in her direction. “Perhaps you yourself cast this spell, in order to create exactly this situation! Your word cannot be trusted!”

“Well, for one, because I’ve been living several kingdoms away for all these months that you’ve been having shoe problems,” Morwen said calmly. “And I can call several witnesses to prove it, if necessary.”

“Witnesses?” The advisor rolled his eyes. “What fool would vouch for a witch?”

“The King of the Enchanted Forest, for one,” Morwen said promptly. She didn’t often care to name drop her friends, but she knew Mendanbar wouldn’t mind being asked to be her witness. He liked to keep tabs on his friends, in a general sort of way, and he would have noticed if she’d gone missing for long enough to cast a spell on all the princesses in a distant kingdom.

“More lies,” the advisor said, glaring at her. “And even if it were true, that just means you must have an accomplice who cast the spell while you maintained your cover. The princesses are obviously cursed, and at the center of a terrible conspiracy. Your Majesty, you must keep them safe!”

“If we’re going to talk about conspiracies,” Miss Eliza said, stepping up onto the armrest of the king’s throne so that she could look down on the advisor, “I’d take a look closer to home. Morwen, I got a good look at his shoes, and we were right — and he’s not the only one.”

“Oh, really?” Morwen’s eyes darted down at the advisor’s shiny black shoes with expensive gold buckles, and she raised an eyebrow.

Miss Eliza stretched languidly — then leapt off the throne towards the advisor, claws outstretched and aiming for the pristine shoes.

“What? Stop that, you mongrel!” The advisor stepped hurriedly back, nearly tangling himself in his cape in his haste to get his feet away from Miss Eliza’s gleaming claws. He glared at Morwen. “If that creature of yours puts one nick on my brand new shoes, you’ll be paying for them!”

“New, are they?” Morwen smirked and looked back at the king. “How long did you say this situation has been going on? And the shoe sale laws, what about those?”

“About a month,” Octaviar said, the beginnings of a frown growing on his face as he looked from Morwen to the advisor.

Morwen raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t call month-old shoes brand new any longer, would you?”

“That is none of your business!” the advisor snapped, jerking his cape awkwardly back into place. At the sound of giggling from the line of princesses, his face began to turn a clashing red. “And for your information, I — I bought these before the law went into effect. I just hadn’t worn them yet, and —”

“You’re a liar!”

The throne room doors burst open and Romilly came tearing in, Fiddlesticks proudly scampering at her heels and turning to hiss at anyone who tried to intervene. Romilly ignored him, rushing up to the advisor and waving a sheaf of papers in his face. “Those shoes _aren’t_ from a month ago. You bought them from the black market just last week!”

“Rubbish!” The advisor tried to snatch the papers from her, but Romilly ducked back away before he could. “But it doesn’t matter — that doesn’t change the fact that the princesses have been cursed.”

“Maybe it doesn’t prove anything about whether they’re cursed, but it does show that you’re untrustworthy,” Morwen said. “You’re breaking the law in the middle of the royal court. Surely that’s enough that the king shouldn’t just lock up his daughters in a tower on your word alone.”

“Locked up?” Octaviar looked horrified at this accusation. “I would never imprison them! I’m protecting them from…” He frowned. “From the curse…”

“The door is locked, they can’t leave without permission, and their friends haven’t seen them in weeks. Sounds like imprisonment to me,” Morwen said, watching in satisfaction as the king turned pale. “But if you really don’t want to keep them locked up, then you should at least hear them out.”

“Hear them out?” Octaviar seemed rather bewildered. “About what?”

The youngest of the princesses darted forward, holding up one of the papers they’d all worked so hard to create. “We drew these for you, Papa!”

He looked down at the paper — and his eyebrows knit together in surprise. Morwen smiled to herself. Instead of a childish scribble, the paper showed a neat, well-drawn chart of tax collection over the past six months.

The king looked up in confusion — but before he could ask anything, the other girls took that as their cue to rush forward, clamoring for their father to see their own pages of charts. They chattered over one another in the same way the cats did when debating who was going to get to go on the latest trip, more excited than intelligible. Words overlapped, snippets about grain yields and water damage and home repairs, until Morwen’s head spun.

Poor Octaviar looked even more confused, looking from the chart to his daughters and back again. “Just a minute, girls… let me get this straight. Are you telling me about farmers? What do they have to do with your slippers?”

“We wanted to help them,” Cerelia said, lifting her chin when the advisors all glared at her. “After the floods. That’s what these charts show — just how badly off all our farmers were when the floods ended.”

The king looked down at the chart, tracing the line of grain yields. His eyebrows knit together at the sharp drop a few months back, and he turned to look at his advisors. “This doesn’t look like the minor incident that you all said it was.”

The red-caped advisor stepped forward again. “Your majesty, rain is good for crops — it follows that more rain must be better. The farmers are only complaining to try to trick more money out of the kingdom.”

“They’re not!” Romilly burst out, stepping forward in her anger. “I know those farmers, and they wouldn’t!”

Octaviar frowned. “You — you’re that shoemaker Ella’s father knew, aren’t you? What was it — Romilly? What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I — well —” Romilly’s eyes darted left and right, and she stumbled quickly backward and attempted to duck behind Morwen. Considering that she was nearly a head taller, this did not work particularly well.

“She’s the one who told us what’s been happening with the farmers,” Cerelia said, stepping back beside Romilly and taking her hand. “It was only because of her that we even thought to compare the grain records, taxes, and rainfall.”

“Oh…” Romilly’s eyes darted down to their joined hands, and she turned bright red. “But — but I was just sharing what was going on. It was just gossip, telling Ceri about how the farmers were waiting for the royal family to put things right — she and her sisters were the ones who decided to do something about it!”

“Which is how they ended up purchasing shoes every day,” Morwen said, since apparently neither young lady was going to explain anything properly. “No one actually purchased any new shoes — your daughters were using their clothing budget to support the kingdom and repair the flood damage.”

“They were… what?” Octaviar stared at her blankly, then turned to look at the twelve lovely princesses gathered around him. “Girls? Is — is this true? Have you been pretending to buy shoes — so that you could help our kingdom?”

The girls looked at one another hesitantly, not sure if they should admit to it or not.

“That is blatant theft!” the red-caped advisor said angrily. “The kingdom’s treasury is not a toy box created for your childish amusement, young ladies! You cannot just fritter away money on anything you please!”

“I wouldn’t call ‘repairing flood damage’ frittering,” Morwen said. “Sounds more like appropriately reinvesting tax money for the benefit of the citizens to me.”

“Yes, just like in Fribblewalt’s economic thesis!” Cerelia said, brightening. “Mother always said that he was a writer who had his head on straight!”

Morwen nodded approvingly. “Queen Ella sounds more and more sensible the more I hear about her. I know the rulers of the Enchanted Forest and the King of Dragons both use the same principles. They would have liked her, if she agreed. Not enough royals do.”

“Because most royals are more sensible than to put any stock in the drivel spouted by merchant-minded idiots,” the red-caped advisor snapped. “I can’t think at all highly of these other _supposed_ rulers if they listen to the same rubbish that the queen tried to institute!”

This, it very quickly became apparent, had been the wrong thing to say. King Octaviar froze on his throne, a dark thundercloud of an expression settling on his face. “Excuse me?” His voice rumbled through the room, low and dangerous. “What did you just say about my wife?”

That could have ended badly for the advisor — but in fact it ended up even worse. Twelve perfectly curled golden heads snapped towards him, rage burning in twelve pairs of lovely blue eyes. “Don’t you _dare_ insult Mother!”

And before any of the others could say more, the youngest princess ran forward and kicked the advisor hard in the knee — not with the supposedly ruined slippers that were being used in the plot, but with the heavier old boots the girls had taken to wearing now that their slippers couldn’t be in use.

The advisor went down like a sack of potatoes, screaming at the bruise on his shin.

Miss Eliza sniffed. “Such an inelegant display.” She slipped forward from Morwen’s side and over to the advisor. “Hush, you stupid man.” She placed her paws on his chest and sat delicately on top, her paws settling on the edge of his cape. She began kneading her paws into the thick velvet, and the advisor fell silent — possibly due to Eliza’s work, or possibly due to horror at the holes being made in his clothing.

Octaviar scowled. “Well, this has certainly been an informative day. I had no idea what you thought about Ella’s skill at running this kingdom for the twenty-five years that she was in charge of it. And considering that you told me that you would be delighted to continue her policies when you took over, I find that I am not very inclined to believe anything else you say.” His eyes raked over the advisor on the ground, then the crowd of other advisors nearby. “Especially regarding my daughters.”

He turned to the princesses, who were still glaring down at the red-caped advisor. Cerelia had gathered the youngest princess into her arms, apparently to prevent her from launching another attack on her downed opponent. “Girls… I think that I owe you an apology. I should have asked you all what was wrong when this situation began looking strange, instead of believing that you’d been cursed.”

The princesses stared at him in shock, Cerelia’s hands going limp on the youngest sister. The little girl didn’t even take the opportunity to resume her kicking, staring up at her father with large, wobbling blue eyes.

“You’re all so much smarter than I understood,” Octaviar went on. “Much smarter than me, that’s for certain. And I might not follow all of this business with the taxes and grain reports,” he gestured at the charts the girls had made, “but I’m so proud that all of you do. You’ll do so well leading kingdoms one day — and I think that you should start with this one.”

The girls looked at one another in confusion.

“I know I’m not up to all the intellectual work of running this kingdom,” Octaviar went on. “Leading knights to the border to deal with monsters is more my area. And it seems that my current crop of advisors are certainly not up to the task either.” He looked over the cringing group of advisors, mouth in a thin grim line. “It seems to me that you girls could do a much better job if I just stopped getting in your way.”

Hesitant smiles bloomed on the girls’ faces as they looked at one another, like they couldn’t quite believe it.

“It sounds to me like Cerelia was the leader of this little scheme of yours,” Octaviar went on, “so I think it seems fitting that she should take over the economic advisor’s role. And since you all agreed that Miss Romilly here is the person to talk to about the farmers in trouble, she can take charge of that particular project.”

Romilly and Cerelia gaped, then spun to beam at one another, hands clasped between them.

Miss Eliza purred. “I suppose that will take care of the hand in marriage part of the reward, too.”

Morwen carefully hid her smile, though the other sisters clearly weren’t bothering.

“Now, then.” Octaviar bent down and lifted the advisor clear off the ground, striding towards the door. “I think you and I need to go have a chat about just what happens when someone violates a royal decree, lies about my daughters, and insults my queen.” He strode out, the pale group of advisors trailing after like their day had been ruined. Morwen was sure that it had.

Fiddlesticks came trotting over to the princesses, purring loudly as several bent down to fuss over him. “Is that it? Did we win?”

Morwen looked at the group of eleven princesses, who had all gathered together chattering about the most effective economic policy to implement to make the best use of the collected tax money, and the couple in the center of the room staring shyly at one another, hands clasped and blushing like they were the only two people in the world. “You know, all things considered… I think we did.”


End file.
